


The Ache From Within

by wingardiumleviosaaa



Series: Of love, lies and loss [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fred is dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 17:45:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6019329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingardiumleviosaaa/pseuds/wingardiumleviosaaa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a bittersweet regret when the door shows up in your peripheral vision, looming dark and dangerously ahead. It gives an ominous feeling, the voice of reason calls out again as it has been zealous times tonight. Don't do this! Go back. You don't need this. But you walk ahead, a gentle fist rapping on the hard, deteriorating door, the sound resonating deeply from the darkened mahogany.</p><p>Or the one in which Hermione tries to deal with Fred's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ache From Within

**Author's Note:**

> A short one-shot I wrote in my spare time! Feel free to leave me comments and feedback I love those!

Steady footsteps drumming on the marble floors. White walls, white tiles. Everything surgical, clean. **Impersonal**. It doesn't matter, surroundings are hardly important, they are a simple presence that one can not be without, yet can go unnoticed if one pleases. Cold light flickers from TL-lamps that illuminates the way ahead, to what you do not even know. There is only silence, no sounds but the steady beating of your strong heart and the soft, ragged breaths that escape from your throat.

There is a bitter sweet regret when the door shows up in your peripheral vision, looming dark and dangerously ahead. It gives an ominous feeling, the voice of reason calls out again as it has been zealous times tonight. **Don't do this! Go back. You don't need this.** But you walk ahead, a gentle fist rapping on the hard, deteriorating door, the sound resonating deeply from the darkened mahogany. 

**Enter.**

The voice sends a chill down your spine, enough to immobilize you with one single word. It makes you freeze on your spot, filled with both fear and anticipation - perhaps even excitement - as your hand hovers over the door knob, ready to obey. Because you know that as soon as you enter that room, obedience is all that is required of you. Your movements are shaky as you push the door open in a slow, languid motion, closed eyes in terror. Waiting for the command. If you had told yourself a year ago that this was what you'd be doing, you would call yourself mad. Get angry, even. You were not into these kind of masochistic actions, you were a sane young woman with an entire future ahead of you. And these things did not mix. Of course that was before your entire world fell apart and your future became one that was void of colour, destined to be dark and gloomy without much joy into it. Before pity was the only thing you could still see in your friends' eyes whenever they looked at you. As if the loss of Fred has broken you, but it has not, or at least that is what you will continue to tell yourself until the day you die too and join him again. 

**You're late. On the bed.** There is no time for niceties when you both know that was not why you're here. You notice the steadiness of your hands now that you can look in those familiar, demanding eyes that are both soothing and entirely terrifying. The stare remains as your gifted fingers slip through the buttons of your shirt, inhibitions slipping away one by one with the freedom of each button. There are no illusions, you know exactly what is going to happen, exactly what he is going to do to you. It is all written there, in that dark gaze, and you have never before seen shades of blue so ominous. 

It is wrong that he reminds you of the one you lost, the way he smiles and the way his eyes move over your bare body. It is almost appreciative, but you know better. What you share with this man is nothing like what you shared with the man you loved. The first time you ended up here with him, it was after you had a meltdown. You had broken down and hid away right here, in this room that now held so many different connotations for you. And he had found you. _I just want the pain to go away_ , you had cried out with your knees to your chest and curled up into a little ball of sadness. You remember his fingers running through your hair, strong arms wrapped around you in a silent support. After all, he was the only one who truly understood what you were going through. When your eyes met his was like looking in a haunted fun house mirror. How could one describe the feeling of looking at the exact same face as the one in which you saw the life fade away, knowing they are one and the same as much as they are not? _I can make the pain go away. For a short while."_ He had said after you kissed him on a whim, too swept up in his looks and his presence there when you needed him the most. And he had given you exactly what you needed. 

Later you'll wonder once again why you had taken those steps to this place, dialled that number when you knew exactly the kind of torture you'd get. It is the reckless abandon that has become a routine ever since _that_ day. No one is allowed to talk about it, you have explicitly told them so, nevertheless it eats away at you in ways you don't even know how to describe. All the time you can feel the looks of endless pity casted at yourself. It makes you feel desperate, sick and uncontrollably sad, without wanting to give in. There is no hair on your head that is willing to prove them right about the ultimate mess you have become. 

A flurry of maroon falls to the floor and you can feel the gaze on yourself, your vulnerability, but you're no longer scared. He makes you bend, but no matter what he does, he will never be able to break you. And even as you scream against the blows that rain down on your body, even as you moan and whimper and beg, fingers curling around iron bed spiles and wrists cuffed to the post, you do not tell him to stop. You never have. **He will not defeat me,** you tell yourself over and over again when it seems like it's about to become too much, the pleasurable torture that you're subjecting yourself to. As he has his wicked way with you, it feels like all the pain just dies down and numbs away, and you'd much rather ache physically than the slow-burning poison that threatens to butcher your mind from the inside out. His lashes, his words, they make you forget. 

It is exactly what you need. 

Bruises have already started to form on your mutilated skin as you hide your sins away beneath the fabric of your clothes. When you move it is shaky and slow, and your mind feels much more steady than your body does. **"Hermione."** Your name is a question that hangs silently in the air as his hands button your shirt back up, running thick fingers through messy curls. What he wants is obvious, clear in those eyes that observe you like you're under a microscope. Back to the pity. 

**"George, don't."**

You know he understands, the emptiness that threatens to consume you every time you leave this hotel room, whenever you think for one audacious second that you are allowed to be happy. But the loss you share with him is one you leave behind on the threshold of Room 514 of the Saint Rosemary Inn, and you do not wish to talk. That much you know. What George Weasley gives you is a moment of sanity in the least sane of situations. Returning the ability to feel, even if only for a while. You know it is selfish to indulge, because by allowing him to have you, you can almost picture being with the one you lost. But you can't help it. You can't stay away. 

**"You know I can't. I'm sorry."**

A stoic expression inhabits your face as your feet carry you away from the room, from the inn, from all the debauchery you have committed. Shame is an emotion that washes over you like a tidal wave, before it disappears again just as quickly. Friends keep telling you that you need to talk, that it is not healthy to keep everything bottled up inside until you explode, but you can't. They never understand. 

You deal with grief in your own way.


End file.
